Microsoft mn-510 issues with Ubuntu, dapper drake, need help installing linux-wlan-ng

[rabidsheeep]

This is a repost from the ubuntu forums, I've been having an issue with this for a week and really wouldn't mind getting it solved. Hopefully someone here can assist.

To make a long story short, I'm trying to get my Microsoft MN-510 Wireless USB adapter to work with my laptop running ubuntu.

I installed the drivers off the Microsoft Adapter's cd using ndiswrapper, and the hardware is recognized as "present". When I go to configure the network, it doesn't recognize it as wireless.

iwconfig in the terminal returns:

lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 no wireless extensions. eht0 no wireless extensions. sit0 no wireless extensions.

This is a repost from

I've searched for the last week and have found a lot of threads on the adapter that end in dead ends. The only one I have found that has any good news is here:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/.../t-106700.html

Which states:

I got the MN-510 to work on my parents' machine using linux-wlan-ng. The prism2_usb module loads automatically when you plug in the device, then you send a couple of commands to load the linux-wlan-ng drivers per the docs, then start the DHCP client. The connection was a bit flaky at first until I followed someone's suggestion of sending the first linux-wlan-ng setup command twice in a row (I don't remember the whole string, you'll find it in the docs, but it's the one that includes prism2_usb DORESET=1). That seemed to prevent the connection from shutting down after a few hours. I have not been able to get the connection to start properly on boot, despite trying all the suggestions in this forum and others (all involving /etc/hotplug). Once I figured out what commands worked, I put them in a script that I run manually with sudo after x starts. If Dad reboots the machine by accident (a weekly thing), he calls me and I tell him how to run it When you are experimenting with the different setup commands to find what works, be sure to unplug the device and re-plug it each time or it won't "take"

Most of that is beyond my comprehension.

I tried installing linx-wlan-ng from a file called linux-wlan-ng_0.2.0+0.2.1pre21-1.1ubuntu_i386.deb

After installing I sorta assumed this was the wrong linux-wlan-ng to install. I downloaded linux-wlan-ng-0.2.5.tar.gz and began to install that.

Untarred the file with tar -zxvf linux-wlan-ng-0.2.5.tar.gz

The readme file states to next enter 'config' which doesn't work. I got suggestions to try ./configure, make, sudo make install, none have worked.

I'm in the home folder directory doing this, should I be in another directory?

I'm honestly clueless at this point, any help in understanding the above quote is greatly appreciated.

[faulkner132]

USB wireless devices are squirelly (in my experience at least) in any OS. What chipset does it use? Unless it uses a common/standard chipset, it's going to be a huge pain to get it to work in Linux which currently lacks widespread wireless drivers.

[glc]

You are MUCH better off using a PCMCIA wireless adapter that has known good Linux support.

[kilgoretrout]

Going from your quoted section in your post, the first thing you should determine is whether or not your prism_usb module is loading. To do that, plug in the device, open a console and run:

$ sudo lsmod | grep prism_usb

If it's not loaded, i.e. the above gives no output, manually load the module with:

$ sudo modprobe prism_usb

and then run your iwconfig command and see if your device is being picked up. If it is, post back and we can go from there.

[rabidsheeep]

Thanks for the responses guys. Trying to work this out again.

After entering the above stated I got back:

FATAL: Module prism_usb not found.

Supposably the laptops pc port was broken by my sister...

Instead of spending $50 on a new adapter and worrying about the compatability issues I might just spend the 90 for an XP cd and get it over with.

I'll still try to get it to work with the current situation so keep the responses coming